254 / Types of Writing
• Transitions provide clear connections between ideas.
• Sentence structure maintains a rather formal writing style and simultaneously
illustrates good variety. Complicated sentences, some of which include
complicated series, contrast with short, simple sentences.
• The present tense appears appropriately in the discussion of the work.
• A concluding paragraph not only refers to the thesis sentence but also states
the author’s attitude. The quotation by the author probably appeared on a
jacket cover; thus the writer did not document its source.SAMPLE LITERARY ANALYSIS of A PoEM
To write a literary analysis of a poem, a writer must select a combination of elements
that, peculiar to that poem, create some significant impact on the poem’s meaning.
An analysis of a poem may consider sound devices, structure, tone, mood, theme,
imagery, figure of speech, symbol, point of view, setting, perhaps even character. [See
entries for each in the Glossary.] It may offer comparisons, contrasts, description,
cause and effect, and opinion. [See chapters for each in Part II.] Unlike an analysis
of a single literary element [see the earlier section Analysis of Literary Elements], the
analysis of a poem must deal with the overall effect of the work. Compare the follow-
ing analysis with the earlier example [in Sample Literary Analysis of an Image].
Mother Nature Domesticated
Emily Dickinson’s poem, “She Sweeps with Many-Colored Brooms,” serves as a typical rep-
resentative of Dickinson’s style. The extended metaphor, sustained throughout the poem and
emphasized by the absence of a clear rhyme pattern, enables her to achieve the compact mul-
tiple meanings for which she is recognized. Because Dickinson lived as a recluse and because
she felt Mother Nature was her only real friend, much of her poetry domesticates Mother
Nature in a manner that makes the spiritual familiar. In the poem, “She Sweeps with Many-
Colored Brooms,” Dickinson uses the common household words to describe Mother Nature’s
sunset. Mother Nature uses a broom, dusts, and wears an apron. She also leaves shreds,
ravelings, and threads as she litters the eastern sky with duds. On the literal level, then, Mother
Nature is, indeed, the housewife, emphasized by the line, “Oh, housewife in the evening west.”
The poem suggests the vivid colors—purple, amber, emerald—that Mother Nature has painted
the sunset sky, colors Dickinson obviously enjoys until “brooms fade softly into stars—/ And
then I come away.”
The extended metaphor, however, suggests some underlying questions the reader must con-
sider. Mother Nature shows herself less than a tidy housewife. She leaves shreds behind, does
not dust the pond, drops ravelings and thread, and litters. Even her brooms are spotted. That
Dickinson refers to the untidy housewife may suggest irreverence, but it may also suggest a
mature awareness that few mothers are perfect. In fact, the adoration for the sunset’s loveli-
ness more clearly illustrates a daughter’s love than it does a lack of respect.